An InGenius Prep E-Booklet
So You Want To Attend
Yale Law School?
Lessons from Nearly Two Decades at
the YLS Admissions Office
PART I
Table Of Contents
Before Applying: Why, When, Where
1
What is the most important question when
considering where to apply to law school?
2
Should I take time off before law school?
3
How do I decide where to apply ?
4
Where do I think I might want to practice?
Pre-Law: What You can do to get Ready before Applying
5
Does it matter where I attend undergraduate
school?
6
What shall my major be in college?
7
Are LSAT scores really important?
8
Should I take an LSAT prep course?
9
What are the best extracurricular activities for a
law school application?
10
Shall I apply this year and ask for a deferral even if I
know I don’t want to come until next year?
Jean Webb
Admissions Expert, InGenius Prep
Former Director of Admissions, Yale Law School
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YLS: Part 1
Before applying: why, when, where
1. What is the most important question in applying to Law School?
Sometimes applicants “put the cart before the horse.” They ask themselves “what will I do after college?” and come up with “Law School”
as the answer. They then proceed to develop a strategy for application and admission to the law schools which are commonly-accepted
as the best in the nation. This process leaves out the most important
question “Might I enjoy practicing law?” This is a particularly common trap for people applying to the top law schools. Students are
so in awe of the opportunities that present themselves to graduates
of Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and others that they say
to themselves (and often said to me as the Director of Admissions at
Yale Law School) that they wanted to come to Yale because with a
Yale Law degree they could do whatever they wanted to in life.
They weren’t wrong in thinking that the granting of a degree from
Yale Law School was an imprimatur of sorts. Because of the intense
competition for admission, students were already “certified” as very
smart and capable. Three years of intense engagement with very
bright fellow students under the tutelage of outstanding legal scholars could only make them more valuable as employees and leaders.
It’s no wonder that many YLS graduates go on to important positions
in business, politics and civic life.
Nevertheless, the vast majority of students graduating from the top
law schools do go on to practice law – the profession for which their
education trained them. And what if it turns out that the student
doesn’t really want to practice law? Several years and hundreds of
thousands of dollars were spent with no clear outcome. For students
at Yale Law School, the financial consequences are not as significant
as at some other schools in that the Law School’s loan forgiveness
program applies to employment other than legal employment, so
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YLS: Part 1
that people may make other employment decisions without forfeiting
the benefits of that program. In shaping the loan forgiveness program
in this way, the School is acknowledging its pride in graduates who do
choose other paths.
This doesn’t mean that the answer “Do I want to be a lawyer” has to
be a clear “yes.” Sometimes the education in itself has a value that
students will never regret. And a path may open to some other opportunity might open that would have been closed without that education and the school’s network. But it is still the most important
question to ask.
2. Should I take time off before Law School?
There are several specific situations that might make it a good idea
to take some time off between your undergraduate years and law
school:
If you don’t want to focus on your law school application during your senior year of college:
Successful applicants to top law schools are people who have been
deeply engaged in their pursuits during college. During senior year,
such students may be doing independent research, writing senior theses, playing major leadership roles in campus organizations. These are
people who may not want to put all that on hold to prepare for the
LSAT and prepare a strong Law School application. They may want to
put all their energies into strong academic performance and campus
community commitments while they are still in college. If they have
the means of support for an “in-between” year, they may want to take
it, and law schools will respect that.
If your academic record has been getting stronger:
Many, if not most, law school admissions decisions are made with
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YLS: Part 1
from three years of academic work in hand. If your academic work
has been improving steadily, you may want to put all your senior year
energy into keeping up that improving performance and present a full
four years of work to the law school admissions committee.
If you’re not yet sure you want to be a lawyer:
A year or two post-college would be an ideal time to test out whether
or not you want to be a lawyer. Many students work as paralegals, as
entry-level consultants, or as interns in some aspect of legal practice;
others work in civic, political or social justice organizations with overlaps with the legal world. Don’t think, however, that a specific internship or work opportunity makes you a shoo-in for admission. In my
years at Yale Law School, working as a staffer on Capitol Hill or teaching in English in China did not make you unusual; rather, it identified
you as very much like a large number of people in the YLS applicant
pool. If you are looking for a way to really stand out and distinguish
yourself, you should work with one of our fabulous Graduate Coaches to help you with your candidacy-building process. No cookie cutter
approach is going to work for you, and determining what you want
to do in your year(s) off, or if you even want to be a lawyer in the first
place, will require personalized attention.
If you’re sure you want to be a lawyer, but there are some things you want
to do before you commit yourself to that demanding profession.
Once you begin the process of legal education and move from there
into some form of legal practice, there will be very little free time to
indulge your other interests and passions (yet one more reason to be
sure you might enjoy practicing law!). There may be something that
you love that you want to pursue before you let it take a back seat to
your study – travel, a master’s in a favorite academic discipline, giving
back to the community (such as serving as a Teach for America fellow), and many others.
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YLS: Part 1
If you want to add another academic credential
Many law schools have acknowledged “specialties.” In some cases, these specialties are represented by joint degree opportunities;
in others, by centers of inquiry; in still others, simply by a preponderance of faculty with expertise in those particular areas of jurisprudence and/or practice. For example, one of Yale Law School’s
acknowledged “specialties” is training future legal academics. So,
faculty readers will be very pleased to see applications which include
advanced study in relevant disciplines. The value placed at Yale Law
on academic disciplines which have important overlap with law can
be seen in the fact that a number of tenured faculty do not have law
degrees.
As with most other life decisions related to law school applications,
you should only undertake an advanced academic degree because
you want to, not because it will look good on an application to law
school; this is especially the case at Yale. It’s too time-consuming and
expensive to be worth the effort if it doesn’t have a value in itself. But
if, for example, you are very interested in a specific academic discipline that will overlap with subjects you want to study in law school,
it may well be a plus to your application to present a degree in that
area. For example, one Yale faculty member actually quite preferred
that his students have a good, separate grounding in history before
considering legal history as a career choice.
3. How do I decide where to go to law school?
In answer to this question, I affirm the conventional wisdom: you
should choose some dream, realistic, and safety schools. These criteria are defined in large part by your numerical credentials, your LSAT
score and GPA.
A dream school is simply a school you’d love to attend, whether or
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YLS: Part 1
not your credentials indicate any chance of admission. If the school’s
stats indicate that no one with your numerical credentials has been
admitted in the last several years, you should go into the process with
your eyes wide open, knowing that your chances aren’t good. But
aiming high can inspire you to present the best possible application,
which will help your chances of admission at schools where you are
“in the ballpark” but not a sure thing. We have certainly seen cases where we would reach far below the 25th percentile of admitted
students in previous years as far as GPAs and LSATs were concerned
where we saw a particularly compelling applicant shine through the
stack of pages in front of us.
Realistic schools are ones where a large percentage of the people
who apply with credentials like yours are admitted. These are the
schools where the non-quantitative aspects of your application can
really make the most difference in helping you stand out from the rest
of the pack.
Safety schools are the ones where virtually all applicants with credentials like yours are admitted. One caution here: take the choice of
safety schools just as seriously as you do the choice of the dream and
realistic schools and think clearly about whether you would actually
attend one of these schools if you were admitted. As with other basic questions, you don’t have to have a clear answer to this question
when you start, but you ought to keep it in mind as you move along in
the process. If you’re not admitted to a dream or realistic school, you
might decided to do something else altogether rather than attending
your safety school. This is an instance when one might decide to take
a year or two to do something else and decide later whether or not
you want to re-apply to law school.
4. Where do I think I might want to practice?
Geography should play a background role in your decision about
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YLS: Part 1
where to apply and to attend Law School. Placement resources in
the top law schools are phenomenal, and general employment opportunities go much deeper into the class than at less well-known
law schools. Their focus, however, is on major firms in big cities and
in their local markets. If that is where you want to practice, their assistance will make job hunting easy for you. If you want to be somewhere else, however, you need to take that into account. Your job
hunt may require more research on your part. Your connections in
Law School form the basis of your future network, and you’ll want to
take that into account in choosing your school.
Pre-Law: What You can do to get
Ready before Applying
5. Does it matter where I attend undergraduate school?
The answer to this question is “yes.” And this is a hard answer for
many applicants to hear. Choices of undergraduate institution are
often less in a student’s control than later choices about graduate or
professional education and training. And students do not want to feel
penalized for choices made when they were still young.
Looking at this from the point of view of an admissions officer or a
faculty admissions reader may be helpful. Law school admissions decision makers are looking for the best students they can find for their
schools. LSAT and GPA are major data for potential student quality,
but the decision makers need to use all the information at their disposal. Among that information is the reputation of the undergraduate
institution the student attended. An applicant may feel (and sometimes appropriately so) that reputation is a “soft” indicator, amounting
almost to a prejudice. Reputations of undergraduate institutions are
built, however, to a large extent on harder data, such as the quality of
the students accepted into the institution, the credentials of the faculty, and evaluations by outside organizations.
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YLS: Part 1
In my experience at Yale Law School, admissions readers knew more
about the undergraduate education at other Ivy League schools,
small liberal arts colleges in the northeast, and a handful of state
universities with powerful reputations than they did about other colleges throughout the country. It was my job as an admissions officer
to share the information I had about these colleges with the faculty
readers, but I could not evaluate the application for them. Students
who had perfect LSAT scores and straight-A averages (along with
strong writing, activities and personal statements, of course) from
less well-known institutions were often admitted through the initial
review process, rather than taking a chance on a denial by faculty
readers based on lack of knowledge of the institution. As the Dean of
Admissions at the time said, “this student couldn’t have done better.”
And we didn’t want to send negative messages to those academic
institutions. This was an individual choice by the Dean of Admissions
at the time and was a strategy endorsed by the academic leadership
of the school.
But individuals in leadership change, and an applicant cannot rely on
the knowledge of an individual admissions officer to guarantee that
all the readers will know his/her undergraduate institution. So, as
part of the application strategy, the applicant needs to assess how to
get across to the admissions readers the strength of his/her education, without shifting the focus of the reader to the institution from
the appropriate focus on the student. Decisions about how to do
this will be made on a case-by-case basis, but here are a few ideas:
think about the credentials of the people writing your letters and
have them state those credentials in their letters; make reference
to alumni of your school who are also alumni of the law school or of
similarly-ranked law schools; think of other significant alumni of your
school and weave their success into the narrative of your application;
describe, as part of your personal statement, how you chose your undergraduate institution and how it has been a positive experience for
your, etc.
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YLS: Part 1
Prior to your application, while you are still making choices about
the shape of your undergraduate institution, you should take advantage of all the best resources your college has to offer. For example, if
you are in a large public university, make sure you take advantage of
any opportunities to take courses in smaller settings. These courses
will require more direct participation on your part, will likely require
regular written work (as opposed to tests alone) and may enable closer relationships with faculty that will result in stronger, more useful
letters of recommendations. If your college has an honors program or
honors courses, take advantage of those classes.
Some applicants may include law school admissions prospects as part
of their strategy for choosing a college, but I think this reasoning may
get in the way of choosing the best institution for a young person at
that time in his/her life. Focus on getting the best undergraduate education that you can afford at a school you want to attend, and then
describe that education as part of your law school application when
the time comes.
6. What shall my major be in college?
As a rule, law school admissions officers do not express a preference
for any particular undergraduate major. They are looking for excellent
academic performance and potential and find those things in undergraduate academic records and LSAT scores more than in any specific
major. They are looking for academic records that indicate that the
applicant has acquired significant skills in writing and thinking. Typical
majors for undergraduates interested in considering a career in law
include history, philosophy, English, political science, economics, and
other social sciences. In addition to being seen as rigorous majors,
education in these disciplines provides important general knowledge
that is often assumed as shared background material in future work
contexts as legal professionals. Any law school would find these majors suitable.
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YLS: Part 1
Admissions officers will look askance, however, at majors that might
be understood as narrowly “pre-vocational,” such as elementary education, business, or even pre-legal studies. In evaluating a non-traditional major, admissions officers have to evaluate the intellectual rigor
of an academic course of study. For example, non-traditional majors
such as the sciences, mathematics and music theory are interesting
because those disciplines require quite rigorous thinking. In evaluating the application of someone with a major in one of these disciplines, an admissions officer will want to be sure that communication
skills, especially writing, are fully developed as well. The admissions
officer may take a longer look at the required admissions essays in
the case of these majors, or at the grades in courses outside the major. They will also look in the personal statements and in the letters
of recommendation for clues that the choice of law as a profession
makes sense for the individual.
7. Are LSAT scores really important?
The short answer is “yes.” Don’t spend time spinning your wheels trying to convince a law school admissions office that your LSAT score
does not reflect your ability. True, there are some special intellectual
tasks required for the LSAT, and you need to practice and prepare for
those. In general, however, performance on the LSAT reflects thinking
and reasoning skills you have acquired over time. The LSAC has studied first-year grades and has shown that the LSAT score is a better
indicator of first-year academic performance than GPA.
If there was a special circumstance around your test or you have a
history of out-performing standardized tests, let the law school know
that. And then let it go.
Having said this, if your LSAT is in a law school’s “ballpark,” everything else in your file is what matters. And the LSAC encourages law
schools not to overemphasize the LSAT score (especially taking into
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YLS: Part 1
account the statistical range around your score that more accurately reflects your ability). I remember one instance at Yale when I was
encouraging a faculty member not to give too much credence to the
LSAT by itself. He felt that the score was the only thing that was not
subjective, and that he had to give the score the most weight in his
decision-making. Within a week, I had a file in hand to show him. The
applicant’s LSAT score was 4 points below Yale’s median score at the
time. At the same time, the applicant presented a very strong GPA
from Harvard College in history, the academic interest of this particular Yale Law professor. I took the file to show him. By chance, he also
knew personally one of the applicant’s recommenders. He immediately agreed that this LSAT became less important in this circumstance.
8. Shall I take an LSAT prep course? Shall I take the test again if I
don’t do well the first time?
The answer to the first question is similar to the answer to the question “Shall I hire a tutor for chemistry? It depends on how well you’re
doing on your own.
The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) has done significant research on the test, including research on self-reported test preparation. The findings indicate that practice is the most important factor.
People who take test prep courses do not necessarily do better than
people who practice on their own. You may get released practice
tests from LSAC or you may purchase test prep books that include
practice tests and test-taking tips. Try these methods and see how
you’re doing. If you’re still not satisfied that the scores on the practice
tests you’re taking reflect your ability or simply are not high enough
to put you in the ballpark for schools you’re interested in, you may
want to consider signing up for a test prep course. Some of the test
prep agencies offer scholarships, so be sure to inquire about that if
your financial resources are small.
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YLS: Part 1
Be sure to do some of your practicing in real test conditions, as it is
the anxiety of the timed test that can sometimes undermine performance. Advisors on some campuses offer practice tests simulating
real test conditions. Or you can hire a friend to time you and make
sure you stop when the timer goes off!
If you don’t do as well as you’d like on the LSAT the first time you
take it, yes do it again. But let’s back up…Be prepared to do your very
best the first time you take it. The LSAC will report all your scores to
the law schools, but LSAC research indicates that the average score is
a better statistical predictor of academic performance in the first year
of law school than any individual score taken separately. If there was
a reason that you didn’t do well on the first test, please let the law
schools know in your application materials. Understandable reasons
include illness the day of the test, family issues that arose around the
time of the test, arriving at the test center at the last minute because
of traffic problems, etc. These reasons don’t convince an admissions
officer to disregard your score, but they can help an admissions officer decide to give you the benefit of the doubt if your score is just
slightly below the school’s normal range or to give more credence to
a later, higher score if your gpa is also strong.
If you are in need of a referral to a good test prep instructor, we have
network of the highest-calibre tutors (many of whom were used by
our instructors themselves when they applied). We also have partnerships with some of these companies - including Velocity LSAT (run
by the inimitable Dave Hall), as well as Next Step Test Preparation,
which is great for 1-on-1 tutoring.
9. What are the best extracurricular activities for a law school application?
Extracurricular activities are usually the “icing on the cake.” They are
not usually central to the decision-making process. Let me start,
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YLS: Part 1
however, by giving you a counter-example. Debate is a frequent activity of pre-law students. And success in that extracurricular arena
tells an admissions officer a lot about a student’s potential interest in
the close reasoning, love for argument, and pleasure in public speaking that are the day-to-day experience of law students and of many
lawyers, especially litigators. So success in debate is an indicator of
a good fit for law school. But many other extra-curricular activities
don’t tell us much about success in school or in the field. Rather, they
tell us whether this person works well with others, what kind of a
community member the person will be in our schools, and, ultimately,
what kind of community member the person will be when a member
of the bar. Unlike undergraduate institutions, law schools do not need
to fill places in orchestras or sports teams, so they do not need to
look for that kind of extracurricular skill. They do love, however, the
community that is created by a diversity of interest and experience.
Legal professionals are often recruited into leadership roles in the
community, and leadership at the undergraduate level is a good indicator that the person will enjoy that role in the future. For some students, the activities they present in their applications might actually
have a different label, rather than “extra-curricular,” which implies that
they take place at the side of the academic curriculum. Some people
are already playing leadership roles in their communities as undergraduates, such as the person in my memory who had served on the
City Council of Cambridge, Massachusetts during his undergraduate
years.
In my experience, almost no leadership experience was discounted –
with the exception of fraternity leadership, as that was seen primarily as an extension of self-interest. Even that had its exceptions, as
one applicant had a major role in an all-Greek effort related to blood
drives on the campus of a major Midwestern university - recognized
as a significant effort. Some students may not present any significant
extra-curricular activity because their focus has been on their scholingeniusprep.com | 1.800.722.3105
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YLS: Part 1
arship, not just to get good grades, but truly to advance scholarship in
a specific area. If this is an area of specific interest
to the faculty readers, and the value of the work is validated by letters
of recommendation, the lack of extra-curricular activity may not be a
problem for the applicant at all.
10. Shall I apply this year and ask for a deferral even if I know I don’t
want to come until next year?
If you know that you want to take time off and those plans are essentially set, please wait and apply the year you want to come. It saves
wear and tear on admissions staff. Law schools know, however, that
there are significant fellowship and work opportunities which are not
known at the time of your application. Because potential fluctuation
in class size is problematic and because schools have an interest in
being fair to each year’s applicant pool, some schools have policies
against deferrals; others limit them. Yale Law School has regularly
been generous with deferrals, having invested significant time in making the admit decision and recognizing that the time away generally
makes the applicant more attractive, not less.
Deferrals for more than two years are quite rare, and, usually, those
are granted for study or work experiences with a defined two-year
time-frame. Some law schools grant only one-year deferrals, and
some none at all.
***
Prior to applying to law school, it is important to build your candidacy
early, as admission to law school is becoming more competitive each
year. If law school is in your future, sign up for a one-on-one consultation to find out how InGenius Prep’s admissions experts can mentor you throughout the process, help build your resume, and increase
your chances of getting accepted.
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YLS: Part 1
Stay tuned for part 2 of my e-book series on the application process,
as I will be giving detail advice on applying to law school through my
perspective as the former Director of Admissions at Yale Law School.
To Be Continued...
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